By John Chen, CEO, Geoteaming

http://www.geoteaming.com  john@geoteaming.com  (877) 652-0875

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

I had the honor of facilitating a program for HIPO (High Performers) for a Fortune 500 company.  This is a unique group and one that this company is still investing in despite the economic downturn.

To me a HIPO is:

H – Always in a hurry

I – I’ll do it, rather do it myself than teach someone else

P – Praised, which means no honest feedback

O – Offensive, brutally honest, little or no tact.

Like a hippo, a HIPO gets their work done with brute force.

Ala Jeff Foxworthy, I thought I’d offer these 7 indicators if you’re a HIPO.

You might be a HIPO if:

1. You do the work of 3 people
2. You’ve been promoted twice in a short amount of time
3. You don’t get any feedback except ‘good job’
4. You rather do it yourself then teach someone else how to do it
5. Your teammates don’t like you
6. You throw your non-performing teammates under the bus
7. The boss doesn’t bring you to any client or high end meetings

I should know what these are, I was one at Microsoft.  I was promoted twice in 2 years, then promoted again in 1 ½ years.  I left many ‘dead bodies’ in my path of people who I ran over in the name of getting the job done.  I was starving for real feedback as every manager I had said I was doing fine, then they spent all their time on troublemakers while I starved for attention and cultivation.  Finally, I was heading into burnout, I had worked 4 ½ years with 120 hours per week, I was engaged and I wanted to spend time with my kids when I had them.

You can now understand why a company can justify investing in this group.  They would be the last to be laid off and in fact, this is the perfect group to take up the load for all the slackers who weren’t doing the job.  In addition, losing of these people would be difficult if not catastrophic depending on the project.  Finally, the investment will make long term payoffs for the many who make the jump from HIPO to LION (Leaders In Organization Nirvana).  A LION is one make the jump from individual contributor to inspiring and effective manager and leader.  Because they were a HIPO, they can be very effective leaders in managing other HIPOs because they know exactly what they want.  BUT, they need to change.  And change is difficult for most, especially a HIPO who doesn’t necessarily want to listen to feedback even if it’s something they crave (paradox).  Let’s look at what HIPOs need to become LIONs.

Top 7 Needs of HIPOs

1. HIPOs need direct feedback
2. HIPOs need help with tact
3. HIPOs need to learn to delegate effectively
4. HIPOs need sustainable work habits and work/life balance
5. HIPOs need to learn to communicate effectively
6. HIPOs need emotional intelligence to manage their emotions
7. HIPOs need to become leaders of other HIPOs

In this program, they learn Structured Reflection, a very direct feedback tool that gives their peers permission and a structure to deliver the information they need to be better.  I found the need for tact after a teammate solved an incredibly complex challenge, then threw his entire team ‘under the bus’ when he took all the credit for the solution and none for his teammates who helped.  I found the worst thing you can do for a HIPO is to ignore them, one team got NO feedback for 60 of 120 seconds and you could feel their pain in being ignored.  I found they need communication training, each team needed to give a 2 minute presentation and 7 out of 9 of them were lacking in key messages, power and punch.  This is after they listened to 10 hours of executive speaking and complaining that some of the executive failed to communicate clearly to them.  

I’m fascinated by HIPOs and what is takes to get them to the next level.  I know that I got to being a LION the hard way, there was no support or specific program for me when I was at Microsoft and that I got many of my LION’s share (ha ha) of training from outside sources that I found myself.  I also found it close to home, I recalled many stories that hit home with HIPOs that are cautionary tales of how to avoid my mistakes in my past.  It turns out I’m a HIPO expert because I am one.  

If you’re interested in cutting edge experience and research into what it takes to turn your HIPOs into LIONs, please start a dialog with me and my personal experience by sending me an email.  I’d like to hear what you’re seeing in HIPOs and what challenges you have.

John Chen
CEO and HIPO, Geoteaming

(877) 652-0875

http://www.geoteaming.com

2008 Training Magazine Top Young Trainer

2008 Puget Sound’s Fastest Growing Minority Owned Business

If you have ever been around a city where it never snows, you know how much a little snow can impact the place.  That’s exactly what happened in Seattle and the surrounding areas (up to 18 inches in some areas!).  Thus, “The Epic” was an appropriate name for the day.

After venturing north of Seattle heading for Deception Pass State Park the snow started to come down hard and we made a team decision to go to a park that was much closer.  Once there we off loaded the bus and broke up into teams.  The day was filled with mental, physical, and eating competitions.  At the end of the day we all played a game of Ultimate Frisbee in a snowy field.

Now exhausted, cold, and tired it seemed time to get back on our beautiful bus, consume some beer, and head back home for dinner!  It was a great day and everyone got their eye on bringing more “oxygen” to our company and moving forward in 2009!

I’ve had a book that has been brewing in me for the past 10 years.  This book is called “The Light and Dark Side of Team Building”.   On one side would have the Light Side of Team Building.  These are all the concept that you know and love and that we’ve been preaching since the beginning, such as inclusion, diversity, consensus, facilitation, out of the box thinking, etc.

Then you would flip the book over and it would be titled “The Dark Side of Team Building”.  You can hear Darth Vader breathing as you open the cover on this side of the book.  Inside here would be dark team building concepts such as assimilation, command and control, traditional thinking, sheep-ism (all having same thoughts/running over the cliff together), and of course, this month’s topic, EXCLUSION.

Over my years, I see all leaders having a reluctance to talk about powerful team building tools that have been used over the course of time.  Can you remember a time when a team got stronger when you ejected a challenging, problem person on the team?  Can you remember a time when you got addition through subtraction?  Tough times forces great leaders to make VERY VERY difficult choices.  Since one of our driving human needs is for connection, most people do almost anything to avoid breaking off an existing relationship, even if the relationship is hurting them, let me repeat, HURTING THEM.  Good times lets leaders get by with marginal decisions and so tough times separates the good leaders from the great leaders by the tough and correct choices they make.

In talking with people over the past decade, I have multiple stories of leaders who ejected a team member after working with them for an extended period of time to improve their behavior and that the team had a sudden boost in team morale and productivity.  I’m not talking about cutting the star, I’m talking about cutting out a cancer.  I’m talking about team members who are not pulling their weight, that bring in toxicity to the teams, that bring teams down with their mere presence.  What hurts you most as a leader is the fact that this person still exists in the organization sends a message that mediocrity is OK.  I don’t think that if you’re reading this article, that you think mediocrity is OK, in fact, I think that you as a leader demand the most of your people and swell with pride when you see someone reach their full potential.

For example, I had made a challenging hiring decision when I was in Microsoft.  Although this person had challenges with the English language, I really thought this person was creative in the way they solved challenges, so I took a risk.  As I directly managed this person, the next 3 months saw a steady decline and showed me the mistake I had made.  This person refused to take any of my coaching, rebelled against existing successful practices, chose to do it their way which was worse than existing practices, and missed almost every commitment he had made on a weekly basis.  It took me another 3 months to successfully eject this person by taking hours of tracking, CYA, and performance reviews.  I’ll never get that 6 months of my life back, but I’ll always hold the lesson that most business owners and managers will say, “Once you make the decision to fire, you only wish you would have made it sooner.”

So with this lesson, I challenge you as a leader to use these tough economic times to see if you’re making the tough and correct decisions.  Look at the team you have and if you have to or need to make cuts, look to see if you can increase your team’s ability by making a decision that you’ve either not realized you needed to make or that you’ve just been putting off for a long time.  I look forward to your stories of this or other Dark Side of Team Building skills, if you have one, please reply to john@geoteaming.com.

John Chen
CEO, Geoteaming

PS: I’ve been working on a inclusion/exclusion based team building event that is focused on what great managers do to retain the talent they have, if you’re interested in becoming a pilot group, please call me direct at (206) 856-8491.  It’s very revolutionary and high emotional impact, so don’t call unless you’re prepared to really examine this issue…

Steve has years of experience selling varous products including software and geocoins.  Steve is an avid geocacher who has found over 1,000 geocaches.  This passion for the sport of geocaching combined with a love of creating high performance teams makes Steve the perfect fit for joining our team. 

Having a local person will allow us to better serve Bay Area companies by:
- Proving personal face to face service.
- Using local event staff will save money on rising travel costs.
- Local courses can developed and refined to pefection.

Any Bay Area companies that would like to contact Steve direct can reach him at (650) 279-7996 or steve@geoteaming.com.

TeamLive- SAVE THE WORLD or your COMPANY… This is a new team building activity for teams that want a big challenge that involves a lot of technology and great times. This event will force your team to communicate, collaborate, and learn to work together to accomplish the goal set before you. Email info@geoteaming.com if you want to learn more about this!

CIRCUS, IMPROV, PUZZLES- This is what our event last week with a team from Microsoft was like. Walking around downtown Seattle, this team building experience led teams to learn how to walk a tight wire, balance on a circus ball, solve puzzles to open a cryptex.

Hamburger University- What a program this was! Seeing this brand that is known around the world and having a great experience designing the course! We used McNugget boxes, Happy Meal boxes, and many other fun things as “caches” while at the McDonalds Headquarters. This was an awesome team building experience for them and a great experience for us! We hope to work with McDonalds a lot more in the future.

What is going on this week:

• Going to Haiwii for a Jeep based team building program! See HI in a way you never thought possible!
• An experiential and interactive Geoteaming experience in Woodinville, WA- one of the regions wine areas and there will definitely be some wine tasting!

TEAMWORK TIPS

For more information check out www.geoteaming.com or contact us at info@geoteaming.com